


Everything was Beautiful but Some Things Hurt

by Honorable_mention



Series: Goodbye Blue Monday [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst, Assassin Peter Parker, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Good Friend Ned Leeds, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra (Marvel), Hydra Peter Parker, Identity Issues, Identity Reveal, Michelle Jones Is a Good Bro, Michelle Jones is a Little Shit, Ned Leeds is a Good Bro, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Precious Ned Leeds, Recovery, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-17 21:22:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19963402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Honorable_mention/pseuds/Honorable_mention
Summary: For an ex-HYDRA assassin and current vigilante, Peter could be quite stupid. Sure, he was good at school. Trig identities? No problem. Secret identities? That's where things got tricky.Or: How Ned and MJ Found Out About Peter's Present and His Past





	1. Everything was Beautiful

For an ex-HYDRA assassin and current vigilante, Peter could be quite stupid. Sure, he was good at school. Trig identities? No problem. Secret identities? That's where things got tricky.

The thing was, Peter's original plan was to never tell anyone anything. He was going to start anew, where no one knew his past. He was going to keep his life as Spiderman a secret from the world.

And then the Avengers found out about everything. Peter definitely had not planned for that, but it was okay. They were okay. 

But Ned, Ned was a different story. Peter could never tell his friend about his life. He was sure that Ned suspected something, considering the fact that Peter would occasionally just vanish off the face of the Earth for a few days, only to reappear and go about his life like nothing had happened. And there was the fact that Peter lived with the Avengers, though Ned seemed more focused on the fact that his best friend lived with his childhood idols than the actual logistics of the situation.

Peter's new plan was to never tell Ned, and that plan was going along swimmingly. Until Peter had to go and screw everything up for himself.

The day had started off normal. He'd gone to school and Academic Decathlon practice, then gone out on patrol as Spiderman for an hour or two before heading back to the tower for dinner and homework. He had swung to the top of the tower after a night of muggings and car thieves, then climbed down a few stories until he got to his window. Stark always left it unlocked for him. He carefully climbed inside. It had been a nice night, and then he heard it.

"What the fuck." Right, Ned was coming over for the night, because it was a Friday and they wanted to do a campaign of D and D over the weekend. Which meant MJ was also there.

Peter did a flip off the ceiling and slid his suit off, trying to think of a way to explain the situation without telling his friends that he was Spiderman. "I swear this isn't what it looks like."

"Really? Because it looks like you're Spiderman, which is totally cool by the way. I was like fifty percent sure it was you," MJ said."It's nice to have my suspicions confirmed."

"I'm not Spiderman, I promise. I'm just," he tried to come up with something, anything, "testing out his suit for him."

"By climbing in through the forty-second window?"

"Yes." That was believable, right?

"Uh huh," MJ said, in a way that meant she definitely wasn't buying it. Peter tried to glare at her, but it was hard to be intimidating while he was trying to find a sweatshirt to cover himself up. Ned was sputtering in the corner, the dice he had been holding in his hand strewn about the floor. 

"But you're scared of spiders!" He finally muttered. "You can't be Spiderman!"

"Oh my god!" MJ was completely wracked with laughter at this point. "You're Spiderman, and you don't even like spiders. That's fucking hilarious!"

"Oh shut up! They have too many legs."

"You totally need to go to my house so that I can show you my tarantulas."

"You keep tarantulas? Why?"

"Cause they're cool?"

"Wait," Ned interrupted, "does that mean you've been Spiderman this whole time? Since he first showed up?"

"Obviously, Ned," MJ said and scoffed.

"I'm not Spiderman!" Peter was trying to protest, but he knew he had already failed. 

"And it's possible to not pronounce fresh avocado as free shavacado," MJ said. "Now can we please start our campaign?" Peter nodded enthusiastically, and Ned, still in shock, picked all the dice up off the floor. MJ was their Dungeon Master, and she had already set up the board with the mini-figures they had all painted at Ned's house a few weeks before. MJ liked to say that she only participated in Ned and Peter's nerdy things for their cultural significance, but she had been enthusiastic about the opportunity to paint small plastic figures. Although she had vehemently denied that fact the next day.

The campaign was a good one. Peter's tiefling wizard and Ned's dwarf fighter kept getting sidetracked helping small children find their mothers or pulling thorns out of a dog's paws, but MJ had long accepted that that was the ways things were going to go, and they had fun. 

It was several hours later when MJ announced that she was going to go get Oreos from the kitchen, which left Ned and Peter together in the room.

"So do you lay eggs?" Ned asked, absentmindedly tossing one of his die into the air.

"What?"

"Cause you're Spiderman. Do you lay eggs?"

"No, Ned, of course I don't lay eggs."

"You climb up walls. I didn't think it was too far of a stretch," Ned said as MJ walked back in with three containers of cookies. She handed one to Ned and Peter and kept the other two for herself.

"What were you two talking about?"

"Nothing," Peter grumbled.

"Because if we're talking about the Spiderman thing, I have a lot of questions," MJ said.

"Not you as well."

"I'm sorry," she said, "but it's not every day you find out one of your best friends is a part-time superhero."

"This is shocking for us," Ned said, eating one of the Oreos. The crumbs dribbled down his chin.

"Well, it's shocking for you. I was expecting it." Ned cocked his eyebrow at her, and she teasingly scowled at him.

"Fine. How about this? You guys each can ask me one question, and I reserve the right to refuse to answer. After that, can we please let it go? Go back to our campaign and stop talking about it?" They both nodded.

"That sounds good," Ned said. "So do the webs come out of your body?"

"Ew, God, no. That would be disgusting."

"Terrible question, Ned, but don't worry. Now it's my turn. How did you get your powers?" MJ asked. 

Peter should have expected that question. It was the most obvious question, the most logical question. It should be a simple answer. But it wasn't one answer, was it? It was the entire history of Peter. It was his time at the base, and the fear he'd felt when he was first alone, and May, and Ben, and Bucky, and Stark. It was knowing he was useless, and the rush of a kill. It was being fucked up, but trying to heal. He wanted to tell Ned and MJ everything, because they deserved to know, but he couldn't bring himself to do it.

"I'm sorry, MJ, but I don't think I can tell you that."


	2. Some Things Hurt

Peter woke up screaming. It was a fairly normal occurrence, and wouldn’t have been much cause for concern if it hadn’t been for the two faces staring down at him and shaking him awake. What were they doing there?

And then Peter remembered. Ned and MJ were sleeping over after their D and D campaign. It was supposed to be a fun weekend, and now Peter had ruined it because he couldn’t keep his issues to himself.

“Peter? Are you okay?” Ned asked. “You were saying something about a soldier.”

“Yeah, guys, I’m good. Don’t worry about me.” He tried to smile, but the remnants of his dream still clung to his mind. He had been with the Soldier on a mission, when the Soldier told him that he could never be good enough. The Soldier had taken off his mask and turned into Bucky, and said the same thing, and then Peter had shot him. And then the soldier had transformed into the pretty lady with blonde hair that he’d killed at age six, and Peter had watched her blood flow down her face once again.

Peter’s heart was racing in his chest, and he felt close to crying and close to lashing out and hitting Ned or MJ, and he couldn’t do either of those things. Because he was supposed to be getting better. That’s what Dr. Kafka said, and what Bucky said, and what Stark said. He was getting better.

But how could he be better when he still woke up screaming? And when, sometimes, he still wished he was at HYDRA, even though he knew they were monsters?

“Peter, what’s wrong? You know you can tell us,” MJ said. “We’ll always be there for you. No matter what.”

“You wouldn’t want to know,” Peter mumbled. He was such a terrible friend. He couldn’t even have a fun weekend with his best friends without causing some sort of scene. Why couldn’t he be normal? 

They had already found out he was Spiderman, and they said they were fine with that, but what if they knew that Spiderman had killed? That Spiderman still did, sometimes?

Sure, Peter had been clean for six months. In that time the only thing he’d done had been to hit someone harder than necessary once or twice, on his really bad days. But that didn’t mean the urge wasn’t there. Peter knew it was bad, that killing was the most vile act a person could commit, but that didn’t stop the thoughts from inching through his head. 

It’s not like anyone would know. Peter was good at covering his tracks. He’d been doing it for years. But then he’d feel bad about what he’d done, and he’d come crying to Bucky, and he wouldn’t be able to explain what he did wrong, because how do you explain that you miss the scent of death in the air?

“You all would hate me if you knew,” Peter whimpered.

“We won’t, we promise,” MJ said.

“You know how I didn’t want to say how I got my powers?” Ned and MJ nodded. “Well, I,” Peter tried to find the words, wondering if they even existed, “it’s because of it. My past.”

“You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to,” Ned said.

“But, if you do want to, we’ll be here for you.”

“We promise,” they said in unison.

“Okay,” Peter said, taking a deep breath, “it started when I was five.” And he found himself telling them everything. He told them about the men with sharp hands and the clean white room where they’d taken him. He told them about the Soldier, and Joan Potocki, the woman with pretty blonde hair. He told them about the lady with brown hair piled on top of her head who was named Dr. Sivana and who was far too human. He told them about his kills, and the Parkers, and how sometimes he missed it all, even though he was getting better. He told them about his therapist, Dr. Kafka, and he told them about how he couldn’t kill her. He told them that he was a bad person, but that the one thing in life he wanted more than anything else was to be good.

There were tears, and hugs, and vows that Ned and MJ would always be his friend, no matter what. They told him that he shouldn’t blame himself for what happened, but Peter saw the way they flinched each time he told them about one of his marks. They swore it wasn’t a judgement on him, though, just a judgement on the people who made him do it.

By the time their tears had dried and they’d finished their sixth group hug, it was five in the morning, and none of them felt like going back to bed. They puttered around the tower, saying an awkward hello to Bucky, who was up making himself breakfast, before they headed down to the lower labs. There they played with the coolest robots they could find until one of the overworked lab assistants yelled at them to leave. Then they ran up to the common room and played Mario Kart. MJ sorely beat both Peter and Ned, despite the fact that she claimed she’d never played before. When questioned, she said it was magic.

“Hey, Peter, do you have any extra legs?” Ned asked as he took a particularly sharp turn.

“No. Where would he put them?” MJ said as she hit Ned with a green shell thrown behind her cart, causing him to spin out of control and fly off the road. He cursed her out, but she just smiled and turned to Peter. “You don’t have any more legs, do you?”

“Of course not!”

“Are you sure?” Ned asked.

“I think I would have noticed some time in the last ten years.” MJ completed the race with Peter, in second, still thirty seconds behind her. Ned dragged himself into fourth place, complaining the whole time. 

Peter looked at his friends. They had accepted him as both Spiderman and Peter, with his fucked up past. They liked him for who he was. He couldn’t believe it. He watched them smile and laugh, and he knew it would be okay. Everything was beautiful, even if some things hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's so weird to actually be done with a story in two chapters, but here it is. I meant to post this last night, but then I fell asleep before I could finish editing.  
> This was actually going to be part of the ending for So It Goes, but then I decided that it would be a better idea to just make it it's own short story. I hope you like it (even if it would have honestly been a terrible ending for my other story)!

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you guys like this. If you happen to find this before reading my first story, So It Goes, this is probably super confusing, but hopefully still enjoyable. It was really nice to just write a short thing and actually be able to say that I was finished with it in a reasonable amount of time (part two will be uploaded tomorrow). I have about three more fics/ficlets I know I'm going to write for this series, but I'd love to hear your ideas and/or what you want to see.


End file.
